Schizophrenia is generally considered and is defined by Merriam-Webster's Third International Dictionary as a psychotic disorder of unknown complex etiology that occurs as simple, paranoid, catatonic, or hebephrenic, and is characterized by disturbances in thinking involving a distortion of the usual logical relations between ideas, a separation between the intellect and the emotions so that the patient's feelings or their manifestations seem inappropriate to his life situation, a reduced tolerance for the stress of interpersonal relations, anxiety, delusions, and hallucinations.
In the United States at the present time, it is estimated that schizophrenic patients occupy more hospital beds than any other illness and that only 20% of schizophrenic patients are hospitalized. One percent of the entire population of the United States has been labeled schizophrenic.
It has been discovered that some schizophrenic patients respond favorably to treatment by hemodialysis and perhaps two or more toxic metabolities have been identified in the dialysis of schizophrenic patients. There exist, however, several drawbacks in using hemodialysis as a treatment for patients who do not otherwise need dialysis. These include salt and water loss to the patient, hypotension, as well as dialysis handling problems, the problem of cleansing and sterilizing the equipment for re-use, cross infection of non-disposable equipment (hepatitis B), and the problem of possible shock and death from unexpected dialysis coil rupture and blood loss. The present invention avoids these complications while increasing the efficiency of removal of toxic metabolites to more than twice that of dialysis.